In the optical communications space, techniques used to detect data modulated onto an optical communications signal may be broadly group into two classes, namely “direct” detection and “coherent” detection. In “direct” detection techniques, the optical signal is made incident on a photodetector. The electrical current appearing at the photodetector output is proportional to the optical power which is the square of the optical Electric Field (E-Field). Data modulated onto the optical signal power using an amplitude-modulation scheme, such as On-Off Keying (OOK) can thus be detected by analysis of the photodetector output current. Direct detection techniques have advantages in terms of low cost, and high reliability for On-Off Keying (OOK) based modulation schemes. As a result, the majority of optical receivers currently used in optical communications networks are based on direct detection.
In “coherent” detection techniques, the optical signal is mixed with a strong, narrow-line-width, local oscillator signal by an optical hybrid, and the combined signal made incident on one or more photodetectors. In some systems, the inbound optical signal is first split into orthogonal polarizations, and each polarization processed by a respective optical hybrid. In-phase and Quadrature components of each polarization can be detected using respective photodetectors positioned to receive corresponding signals output by the optical hybrid. The frequency spectrum of the electrical current appearing at the photodetector output(s) is substantially proportional to the convolution of the received optical signal and the local oscillator, and contains a signal component lying at an intermediate frequency that contains the data. Consequently, this “data component” can be isolated and detected by electronically filtering and processing the photodetector output current.
Coherent detection receivers offer numerous advantages over direct detection receivers, many of which follow from the fact that coherent detection techniques provide both phase and amplitude information of the optical signal. As such, more robust modulation schemes, such as phase shift keying (PSK), differential phase shift keying (DPSK) and quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) can be used.
However, receivers based on coherent detection techniques have suffered disadvantages that have, to date, prevented successful deployment in “real-world” installed communications networks. In particular, optical signals received through conventional optical links are distorted by significant amounts of chromatic dispersion (CD) and polarization dependent impairments such as Polarization Mode Dispersion (PMD), polarization angle changes and polarization dependent loss (PDL). Polarization effects of the fibre link tend to rotate the transmitted polarizations, so that, at the receiver, they will typically be neither orthogonal to each other nor aligned with the polarization beam splitter of the optical hybrid. As a result, each of the received polarizations (downstream of the polarization beam splitter) contain energy from both of the transmitted polarizations, as well as artefacts due to CD, PMD and PDL. These problems are compounded for polarization-division multiplexed signals, in which each transmitted polarization contains a respective different data signal. In such cases, each received polarization contains a mixture of both of the transmitted data signals, so that, in addition to compensating CD, PMD and PDL, it is also necessary to separate these data signals from one another.
Various methods have been proposed for addressing these problems. For example, a quadrature coherent receiver with electronic polarization compensation is described by R Noé, in: “Phase Noise-Tolerant Synchronous QPSK/BPSK Baseband-Type Intradyne Receiver Concept With Feedforward Carrier Recovery”, Journal of Lightwave Technology, Vol. 23, No. 2, February 2005, and “PLL-Free Synchronous QPSK Polarization Multipex/Diversity Receiver Concept with Digital I&Q Baseband Processing”, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, Vol. 17, No. 4, April 2005. In this respect, it will be noted that Noé also alludes (in the introduction) to the possibility of also compensating chromatic dispersion. However, Noé does not provide any teaching as to how this would be done. The applicability of RF channel estimation techniques to the detection of polarization-division multiplexed optical signals in a quadrature coherent receiver is described by Y. Han et al. in “Coherent optical Communication Using Polarization Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output”, OPTICS EXPRESS Vol. 13, No. 19, pp 7527-7534, 19 Sep. 2005.
One commonly used method of addressing the problem of dispersion in high-bandwidth communications systems is by inserting one or more optical dispersion compensators, within the link. Such dispersion compensators may, for example, take the form of length of fibre, a Mach Zehnder interferometer, an optical resonator, or a Bragg reflector. Some of these compensators can also produce a controllable amount of compensation, which enables mitigation of time-variant dispersion effects. In either case, these compensators are intended to at least partially offset the signal distortions introduced by the system transfer function H(w). The compensation function C(w) implemented by the optical dispersion compensator is a dispersive function that is selected to optimize performance of the link. In a fully linear system, the compensation function C(w) would preferably be equivalent to the complex conjugate H*(w) of the transfer function H(w), in which case H(w)*C(w)=1, and the combined effect of H(w) and C(w)=H*(w) would be an undistorted received signal that exactly corresponds to the transmitted optical signal. However, limitations of optical components, and the time-varying amount of compensation required, make this objective very difficult to achieve. Additionally, optical compensators are expensive and introduce significant optical losses. These losses must be offset by means of additional optical gain which introduces more optical noise. The additional (or higher-performance) optical amplifiers required to provide this increased gain further increases the total cost of the communications system. In addition, the presence of optical dispersion compensators and high performance amplifiers distributed along the length of the link provides a significant technical barrier to system evolution. For example, implementation of optical switching (e.g. at the transmitter and/or receiver ends of the link, or an intermediate site without electrical termination) necessarily requires adjustment of optical amplifiers, in order to accommodate changing energy states within the link.
FIG. 1 schematically illustrates the system of Noé (Supra, April 2005). As may be seen in FIG. 1, an optical signal received through an optical link 2 is divided by a polarization beam splitter 4 into orthogonal polarizations (nominally referred to as X and Y polarizations in FIG. 1), which are then mixed with a local oscillator (LO) 6 through a quadrature 90° optical hybrid 8. The composite optical signals appearing at the output of the optical hybrid are made incident on a set of photodetectors 10 to generate analog electrical signals Ix, Qx, Iy, Qy respectively corresponding to real (Re) and imaginary (Im) parts of each polarization. These analog signals are then supplied to a clock recovery circuit 12, before being sampled at the symbol rate by respective Analog-to-Digital (A/D) converters 14 to generate digital sample streams of each of the real (Re) and imaginary (Im) parts of each polarization. The digital samples are then supplied to a 1:M DEMUXer 16, which splits the data path into M parallel sample streams having a lower sample rate (by a factor of M), each of which is supplied to a respective processing module 18. Within each processing module 18, an inverse Jones matrix that models the polarization performance of the optical link is used to compensate polarization distortions. The polarization compensated samples can then be decoded for data recovery.
In practical networks, the inbound optical signal can exhibit very high speed polarization transients. For example, polarization angle transients (rotations) at rates in excess of 2 KHz are common, and rotation rates in excess of 20 KHz have been observed by the inventors. Because of the high sensitivity of coherent detection systems to polarization angle, any receiver intended to be deployed in a real-world communications network, as opposed to a computer simulation or laboratory bench-top, must be able to track (that is, compensate) these transients.
While the system of Noé is satisfactory in a laboratory setting, it cannot track high speed transients of the type encountered in real-world communications networks. This is due, at least in part, to the slow speed (M/g symbol durations) at which the inverse Jones matrix coefficients can be updated. Thus, for example, Noé, claims that with a 10 GBaud signal, the inverse Jones matrix coefficients can be updated with a period of 16 μS. This is far too slow to successfully track 20 kHz polarization rotations, which have a period of 50 μS. In addition, the system of Noé tends to fail in the presence of severe Chromatic Dispersion (CD), at least in part due to failure of the clock recovery circuit as inter-symbol interference (ISI) increases, and consequent uncertainty of the sample timing of the A/D converters. Signals that are severely distorted by chromatic dispersion (e.g. greater than about 1000 picoseconds per nanometer) are spread out to such a degree that it is not feasible to recognize the symbols, and so one is not able to distinguish the two polarization division multiplexed signals from the two received polarizations.
Accordingly, techniques enabling polarization compensation of polarization transients, in the presence of severe dispersion, remains highly desirable.